


Swimming through sick lullabies

by I_am_sorry



Series: Once in a lifetime, the suffering of fools. [2]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Companion Piece, Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Civil War (Marvel), Retrospective, Steve Rogers-centric, almost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-14
Updated: 2017-04-14
Packaged: 2018-10-18 17:46:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10621962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/I_am_sorry/pseuds/I_am_sorry
Summary: Steve doesn't even know why he starts or why he thought black over white was the best choice to go with.[After his letters fail, Steve draws and draws and draws. It's what he does best, after all.]





	

**Author's Note:**

> It could be read as Gen but I would like to think of it as stony.
> 
> *For the ten years of stony fest.

i.

The first sketch shows nothing, really --just a tangle of lines. Steve doesn't even know why he starts or why he thought black over white was the best choice to go with.

Tony loves color. It doesn't matter though, Tony won't want to see any of this work.

Steve knows him too well, too little --just the right amount to know, Tony won't ever open Steve's letters or any other paper with Steve's name on it.

What moves him to draw though, is hope. With Steve it has always been about hope.

And he draws, clear lines, tangles of lines --it doesn't form any shape at the beginning but, Steve is patient to wait it out. His drawings will take form, he just has to wait.

Wakanda is far behind. Bucky has peace, and is nice to know that at least of the two, one can rest. Steve's days are long, longer that the ones he remembers passing at the Front --he is still fighting a war but the reasons are beginning to blur; the thing is he can't stop the fight, not now, maybe not ever.

Somedays he wishes he could, somedays he misses someone who understands what it is like --sometimes he just wonders if Tony is doing alright.

And some others, he just draws.

Clint says it's good for a man to have a hobby. Steve doesn't say anything back --even less that every line he scratches on paper feels like atonement.

  
ii.

Steve dreams in monochrome. Of life, (a family of three; a man of blue eyes and blonde hair, and his black haired wife holding the hand of their kid. They seem happy, the woman who stands tall as if so much weighted on her shoulders, and the man always behind to catch her if she were to fall.)

and of death, (a man of black hair, laying pale over a cold tile table, and a man of fair complexion talking to him about love and destruction.) he never remembers what was the difference between the two dreams once he open his eyes, though.

The only recurring thing seems to be the lack of color. Steve draws the black haired woman and the black haired man and it feels a little like going home, he doesn't get why.

It doesn't end there. It never does.

Steve saves the drawings of the dreams, but he never completes them. It's frustrating.  
So he grabs a new drawing pad and goes back to meaningless lines and drawings that will be finished but not stared at.

It takes him six days to complete a sketch that makes sense. Steve's lines have finally taken a route, they are telling a story, or the beginning of one.

The drawing is about an old coffee shop across the street. The building looks fragile and about to collapse; is the first detail Steve notices as they pick their first safe house.

Steve guesses is a form of saying, _hey! look this is what I see every day._ Of keeping contact in a way.

It should be enough.

It isn't.

  
iii.

Wanda touches the sketch lightly, the black of her nail scratching the white paper. "Do you think about him much?" She asks, voice thick with accent.

"Not at all," Steve doesn't lie. He doesn't think of Tony much, doesn't like to, that's why he draws.

Steve is sitting on the floor, a lot of papers and pencils scattered around him.

"Your drawing shows destruction," Wanda offers contemplative.

"I've seen my fair share of it," Steve answers, he is not stranger to war. "Is just what I remember of my time at the Front."

"It looks like a man dying on the snow,"

"Old memories," Steve looks down at the paper.

"It looks like Stark."

Steve looks up, smiles tiredly. "You are a good girl, Wanda."

Wanda frowns, sits with him. "You regret it?"

No. Steve doesn't regret it, he owed it to Buck. "I miss having a home,"

"I don't remember what it felt to have one." Wanda answers quietly and Steve feels guilt, heavy, clawing at his chest. Petro and Wanda, Sokovia, it stills feels like a failure to him.

"You will always have a place here, with us." Steve says. It may not be enough but is something.

"Yes," Wanda touches the drawing again. "Yes." She repeats and it feels like a promise. A duty. A beginning and an ending. Steve will craft a home for her, and for all the others --but he will remain a vagabond. Exiled forever.

Steve closes the notebook and stands up, extends a hand to her.

Wanda's fingers are warm when she accepts his help.

  
iv.

Sam is the only one who never says a thing about the drawings. Steve is grateful for that. Sam knows him too well, maybe, and that's the reason why he stays silent.

Steve draws sometimes with Sam watching him close by.

It's a quiet affair. Only the sound of their breathing and Steve's pencil scratches over the notebook. He has filled four of those already, none of them seem good enough for him, to send to Tony though.

"You never say anything about this," Steve starts, grabbing an eraser to dim some of the darker lines of the sketch.

"There's not much to say,"

"About how you think I am wasting my time."

"Are you?" Sam crosses his arms.

"No, Tony," Steve ends up erasing half of the work in his distraction. "Tony will look at it, just at his own time."

"So?" Sam prompts. "Why do you ask my opinion, then?"

"You always have one." Steve says.

And Sam shakes his head, smiles. "Yeah, not about this one."

It sounds fair. Steve doesn't say anything else after that.

  
v.

Natasha stops visiting Tony after his refusal to read Steve's letters. She says, Tony won't accept any of Steve's good offerings. It's futile.

"I've got time," Steve says as he works on the shadows of his most recent drawing. "It's what I have most."

"And patience," Natasha adds, sitting in front of him. "What is this one about?"

"Destruction, hope," Steve looks at the paper on his hands. "What I saw in Wakanda, Bucky's death, the food my mother used to coock for me when I was sick and small."

"It's a lot," Natasha comments, interested.

"It's not enough,"

Steve has learned, with Tony, it might never be.

There's this series of drawings he's making too, what he sees daily. What he saw once. What he can't articulate in actual words.

The letters were never that good. Steve has never been good at eloquence. As a soldier, he's rough -it's just how he is… but the drawings, the drawings make it easier.

Steve can say a lot with them, without actually saying anything.

Natasha sighs. "It's up to you Cap."

  
vi.

With Scott, Steve isn't really sure, what's with Scott but he's a good man -and to Steve that's enough.

Scott says, Steve's drawings are cool, so very cool, like Whoa! And 'Am I rambling and yeah, I'm shutting up now."

Steve nods amused, and lets him stare at all the notebooks as long as he wants.

  
vii.

  
“Not this week.”

It’s not a definitive answer but it is something. Steve nods. Silence comes heavy after that.

Tony leaves and Steve feels defeat. There are things you can't solve by will alone, even though Steve would like to try.

The days pass after that, minutes, hours wasting away. Wanda says, she's able to delete memory as a inanne observation -but Steve knows better, with her nothing is ever random; he tries to not think about what she's implying or why sometimes, in the dankest hours of the night when he can't sleep it sounds, it sounds like a solution.

Tony takes a year to answer back, he sends back Steve's sketch notebook with all the pages torn or ripped in half -except for one, a drawing of a field of daffodils remains intact.

It's a start.

**Author's Note:**

> Daffodils = forgiveness.


End file.
